Posts Tagged ‘Table of Contents’

The canon of the New Testament, i.e. the Table of Contents of the Bible, was determined by the authority of the Catholic Church. Prior to Church proclamations in the late 4th century, there were plenty of disagreements among eminent Church fathers about individual books and whether they were divinely inspired or not. These controversial individual books included some that are in the Bible today: Philippians; 1 and 2 Timothy; Titus; Philemon; Hebrews; James; 1 and 2 Peter; 1, 2, and 3 John; Jude; and Revelation.

Thus the New Testament canon, the Table of Contents page of every Bible, is indubitably an authoritative unbiblical tradition that Protestants accept in contradiction to sola Scriptura, to their own rule of faith. Scripture never contained its own Table of Contents page; that had to be authoritatively decided at the Council of Carthage in 397. Without this council, there would be no Bible as it is today.

Without the Bible as it is today, sola Scriptura is impossible. But the Protestant has to accept a 1600+ year old, binding, infallible, authoritative decree of the Catholic Church in order to get his Bible’s New Testament as it is today. This raises huge problems of internal incoherence. Protestants are forced to either make a huge exception to their rule of faith (and then one asks, on what basis do they do this?, etc.), or simply ignore the difficulties raised by discussion of the canon (the usual insincere recourse).

There’s only three options: 1) admit sola Scriptura is incoherent and thus false, 2) admit sola Scriptura is incoherent and irrationally embrace the incoherence, or 3) ignore this entire post as if you had never read it, putting your soul at risk.